Do any of you currently own a DNA? The battery life on that phone is on par or better than any other HTC phone to date. Throw in the fact that the DNA has a larger screen at 5 inches and a smaller 2020mAh battery compared to the ONE's 4.7 inch screen and 2300 mAh battery and this phone should last a day and a half at least with moderate to heavy use. I get over 4 hours of onscreen time with my DNA and anywhere between 22-36 hours of total battery life before I have to find a plug. For those of you saying batter life being marginal or passable is just flat out not true. If I had enough money I would send each of you a DNA to judge for yourselves.Reply

O.K. so on an average day you can commute 2x30 min with navigation, 1h talk and 1h look at your calendar and messages, 1 h read your e-mail or browse the web and you are still dead next morning.

Well, that is what I call no even passable. In real life it means:* If I have an above average day (traveling, waiting for appointments, play a game, weekend, show off the latest pictures to family, get hit with more than a couple of app updates in a day, etc.), the phone is dead in the afternoon* If I forget to charge over night, my phone is dead in the morning

That User Experience is horrible! Give me the option to double the battery size (Motorola got the idea with the MAX), I'm willing to take the size/weight consequences.

I have an HTC Sensation 4G and I'm spoiled by my previous TREO 600, which lasted a week.Reply

Okay so you are comparing today's phones battery life with a phone that is 2 years old. The batteries are much larger now, and there have been enhancements in the efficiency of cell radios and SoCs. I'm sure it will be okay. My EVO LTE easily lasts an entire day and that includes push email all day, texting all day, listening to music for about 3 or 4 hours at work, 1-2 hours of talk and 2x40 minute commutes listening to music via bluetooth. And I still have upwards of 15-20% battery left when I go to bed.Reply

I've said for a while that whether or not MS makes it in the mobile space with their own devices, they undoubtedly are going to have a major impact on design and what is considered possible with such devices.Reply

It's a great platform for ui experimentation. Too bad they chose to go the tile route, as you've said.http://mycolorscreen.com/That's why I never understood why people went so gaga for the windows tiles. While I get that it is its specific pattern that is often be called out, the tech itself (live tiles) is simply a more limited form of widgets.Reply

that's HTC wanting to use Windows Phone but don't want to pay the extra cost for a Windows phone license. Instead choosing to pay the royalty fee for using android OS, and still make a skin to look like Windows Phone. Reply

Actually, in my team there are two other people who will only buy phones with MicroSD support, so I guess that's all of us :)

I grant you that with the 64GB model this is not as much of an issue, but it does mean that you are not locked in to a particular memory configuration when you choose a device and can easily and cheaply upgrade if your storage requirements go up.Reply

I don't always need extra space but when I do, I prefer removable micro-SD. If it comes down to choosing HTC or a Samsung phone which comes with a SD slot, guess which phone folks will buy? Wrong move HTC.Reply

This a hundred times! And holding movies and comic books and media in general. It seems some people are so against having a sd slot. why? if you like cloud service that is cool, to me it just seems like another way to get money from me. I like the idea of having my media available when offline in any scenario, like long train rides and flights.

the sd card issue got me to wait for a few months to get the s3 over the one x.Reply

It supports USB on the go FYI, and isn't that as practical, or even more practical, than popping in/out MicroSD cards? And basically people with computers use thumbdrives more often than microSD cards, so that could add another point for practicality. :)Reply

And another !! Seriously, I read in many articles the reason why 'See no evil' Google deliberately cripples their Nexus phone in a small way, like lack of expandable memory, is to avoid upsetting other makers of Android phones too much, and why other makers omit SD slot is to force buyers into early decision into how much storage they might need over life of the phone.

Lack of SD was the only serious flaw in the Nexus 7, and stopped me buying it.Reply

Meant to add, reason for 'other makers' forcing buyers into early decision on how much storage they might need... is to make more money., as users can buy SD storage far cheaper than from the phone makerReply

it's not so much the missing sd card slot, but the GB that count... and an SD slot counts for +64gb. it also rises the price by $60. that's the basis for phone comparison...for me 32gb has become the absolute minimum so any phone locked to less is just out (well with the exception of the nexus devices, for obvious reasons)...Reply

Totally disagree with you on this one. SD cards are a nice option to have considering the amount of storage space needed to store high definition movies, 1080p video recordings, photos, and games that require buckets and buckets of megabytes. I will say however this was a nice decision made on HTC's part to finally ship a flagship phone starting with 32GB's and giving customers the option to expand that to 64GB if so desired.

I think one of the major differences between Samsung and HTC when talking about their respective flagship phones is storage space. When you compare devices side by side they both deliver quite nicely on almost all fronts. But the one glaring omission on HTC flagship devices is the disappointing lack of storage. HTC ONE X shipped with 16GB and no SD card and so did the DNA which I own.

I thought long and hard about the DNA because of that very reason and almost went with Samsung, and I am a huge HTC fan. The only reason I thought I could get away with this omission was because of Verizon's Network. I am glad I bought the DNA and love the phone to death, but if I am being honest, I will never buy another phone with only 16GB of storage, period! Reply

Not true - the lack of an microSD slot will prevent me from buying, what might have otherwise been a new purchase for me.

We like trying different roms, backing-up to our microSD cards, etc.

In addition, I don't usb-connect my phones to my laptop after rooting in Linux. I don't want extra software / apps in Windows, and having the option to dump things to our microSD card, and then and then pop it into the laptop to swap over.Reply

I concur. The lack of a dedicated task switcher button (and the horrible, gingerbread-esque task switching UI) is really a deal-breaker for me. I can't believe they ruined task switching like that.Reply

I also find it surprising that no major manufacturers are offering generic Android phones. I think they see their skins as positives for the platform, but I also think that the majority of people prefer the generic Android launcher to any other.

I must admit that I do like certain extras that manufacturers offer (e.g. the S-Pen on my Note or Samsung's eye tracking technology), but I would prefer it if they just seamlessly integrated it into the OS rather than forcing non removable skins and widgets down people's throat.Reply

Look, I understand companies want to "differentiate" using OS customization...but I hate it. I buy a phone based on specs and performance. I DO NOT want ANY customization. I want a Nexus phone essentially, but made by HTC.

Seriously, just give me an option to run vanilla Android and I'd buy it. You're getting my money...but give me an option to run the Sensified version, make it default I don't care. But give me an option to run vanilla!

The current situation is like buying a Sony Vaio and NOT being able to install and run just Windows...no you MUST run a Sony version of Windows.

It's stupid. One reason why the iPhone is so popular? Because you don't get a choice...you get what Apple gives you. And it's the same regardless of carrier or country or whatever. No crap loaded on it that you can't get rid of or anything else.Reply

Last I checked apple doesn't allow sprint or any other carrier to install a NASCAR app by default. Or sprint store. Or sprint music. Or some half-asses skin over the operating system that sucks down half the system memory and is significantly slower than stock android.Reply

Well you can always root, S-OFF and flash a custom ROM without Sense. That's what I have on my HTC Sensation. Vanilla Android 4.2.2 with Nova Launcher. And I'm loving it. I've had the phone for almost two years now, and for 1½ years I've used custom ROMs on it. Some have had Sense, some haven't. I seem to swap between them from time to time, but I just love the fact that I have the choice and a very active community that still keeps developing their ROMs for a device HTC isn't updating anymore.Reply

I never could figure what happens with phones that have no removable battery. I would jump on this phone in an instant (metal body, yes!!).

But, again, what happens if I flash a rom that simply gets stuck? Normally I would remove the battery, but in this case I have to wait for the battery to discharge.

I have a DHD (been having it for the past 2 and some change years) . I really like when metal is used as a body material and I cannot go back to "high grade" polycarbonate. Please guys, plastic is plastic. No matter what you do, in the end it's plastic.

This phone is spot-on so many fronts. 4.7in, 2gb, metal body, yet it lacks the most basic thing, removable battery.

Sorry HTC, another one that I'll skip. Well, it seems that I'll have to keep my phone for yet another year.

The problem with the new phones is that they mostly do what old phones do (music, web, mail, navigation). Yes, I cannot watch HD movies. Yes, I cannot play Crysis on it. That\s what 100+ in TVs & CF/SLI setups are for.Reply

I have an HTC One S, and I have spent the last nine months telling everyone and sundry just how good it is. HTC has been in the strange position for the last little while in which their sales are down and their reputation is somewhat battered in a lot of circles, but their current range of products are superb. I hope they can reverse the sales decline before long - I want them to continue to have the resources to be able to compete with Samsung.

I would be interested in seeing what the various international variants of this product are and which LTE bands are supported. Hopefully this information will be available soon. Reply

It's ok having a non-removable battery if the trade off is water resistance, like the sony Z. But loosing on being able to switch batteries, loosing the micro-sd slot, and getting instead... what? premium feeling? that is too subjective.Reply

It's idiotic to produce a device optimized for media and then cripple the user's ability to load that media. Google, sadly, does this on purpose for some marketing reason. But HTC? Maybe they're trying to limit sales, so they won't run out of stock.Reply

Yeah, HTC just does not learn from Samsung. Copying Apple is NOT the way!. Innovating forward and give users useful features are things consumers want. How hard is it to add the microSD slot ?. Not that there is no space left, plenty of space for a tiny thing yet, it was left out ON PURPOSE ?. Pity ....Reply

Android 4.1.2 in 2013? If OEMs insist on layering software on top of the OS they really need to start engineering it for portability between versions from the start. Getting a phone that's outdated on day 1 and will probably wait for months if not years for updates is unacceptable.Reply

Crap I can't find the exact one that I was thinking of.... and I know the second photo is a mock image of the GS4, but either way, what makes it stand out is the extremely thin bezel on the sides of the phones.

Looks great, sleek, professional, stylish regardless...

Unfortunately I think HTC missed it again by not making this have expandable memory....

Some people wonder why the GS3 sold so much better than the competitors when SoC-wise it was not hard to compete with it(for what's inside), but they were pretty much one of the only options out there with user replacable battery+ expandable memory, that a lone makes the deal for me when considering others...

...Yes, even the replaceable battery, I know most users don't care about it, or plan to not keep it longer than 2 years max(contract), but having that flexibility to swap out, and also if/when the battery wears out/damaged, it's easy to replace. Whereas with my ipod touch 3rd gen can barely hold a charge, I know there are walk through's to change the soldered battery, but I'm just not motivated to do it.Reply

Most devices are good enough. The GS3 is definitely at least a good enough device. Then the marketing takes that good enough device and sells it to customers.

The difference between a device that's an "8/10" and a "9/10" really isn't anything that most users will notice. So if you can convince your customers that your device is at least an 8/10, then they might get it. A competing device might be a 9/10, but it might as well be garbage for all the customer knows.

And even if that superior device was marketed properly, customers likely are only convinced that the superior device is an "8/10" device. It's really difficult to convince a customer that your device is truly great with marketing alone.

Everyone always says that Apple only sells products because they can market worth a damn. Apple products are definitely good enough, but even they can't convince customers that their products are truly great with just marketing. A customer's friend will buy an Apple device, use it and THEN convince the customer that Apple devices deserve to be thought of as great and not just good.

Fun Fact: Old people get shitty tech (or no tech at all) because tech marketing isn't targeted to them and they are less likely to have friends with tech products. So not only do they not hold any devices as "great," they aren't even convinced about which ones are "good enough."Reply

Is the screen and digitizer glued down? I have had to repair my HTC radar and getting the screen and digitizer separated from the chassis is brutal. I wish they would do something similar to Nokia and have a mechanism that locks the screen into the chassis so you can remove it.

I get the feeling a HTC engineer helped make the Microsoft Surface Pro with its glued down screen.Reply

Honestly surprised that no one has commented on how impractical it is to have a 4.7" screen in one's pocket. I had trouble walking up stairs with a 4.3" screen in the front pocket of my jeans, I can't even begin to imagine the pain and chaffing from a phone this large. And that is assuming it will fit in one's front pocket in the first place (this wont fit in shallow pockets without risking a drop).

I am sure these phones are great to use with their massive screens but in no way is it worth the sacrifice in portability. I have a tablet when I need the resolution or to consume media on the go. My phone should be comfortable to walk/run/jump around with in my pocket. These are not.

I also have a massive bone to pick with HTC. I have bought two of their phones and broken my contract early to upgrade from both of them after a year and a half. They fall apart, chip, and are damaged just from day to day wear in a case. The reception sucked with both. The earpiece audio quality sucked. The fidelity of the calls sucked. The mic sucked. Both ended up enjoying high velocity aerodynamics testing after they had been replaced. Never falling for their marketing and joyous reviews of their products again. Reply

I'm only 5'9", and an Optimus G (4.67" screen, roughly 5" in height) fits into the front pocket of all my jeans (low-rise and regular) without issues. Doesn't jam up when I sit. Doesn't slip out when I walk. Slides in and out of the pocket nice and easy, even when sitting.

6' tall and I wear boot cut jeans that are not skin tight nor skinny jeans. Don't know what to tell you, this is my experience with a 4.3" HTC phone. It fit in my pockets in that I could slide it in. It did not allow me anywhere near what I would consider a normal range of mobility. While it could fit in most of my pants/shorts there were at least two pair that I was more than a little afraid that it would fall out of the shallow pockets.

That was my experience with that particular phone. Your's may obviously vary.Reply

You didn't say what model and how old that model was. I have the EVO 4G LTE and I too had the same fear(s). It would be too big; like holding a brick too my head. Wrong. It is a lot thinner than my older (and smaller) phones. It slides easily into my pants front pockets and I am able to sit down with no problem. Outside of a plastic cover at the top back of the phone (around the camera lens) the whole phone is a piece of machined aluminum. Awesome phone. Great form factor.

I like that HTC is just tweaking their line. Improvements in the video/processor/camera is what we are all looking for. Speakers front facing is smart. Improved front facing camera is expected. Now, if they just improve the battery life we have a home run. My EVOLTE does have a miniSD slot while the One X varients do not. I don't see why HTC is not putting this option on their phones. There is a demand for this feature.Reply

For me it is tremendously refreshing to finally see someone other than Nokia focusing heavily on camera quality and features...and NOT on megapixels. Larger pixels, F/2, and optical stabilization is what I've been waiting for in an Android phone! Reply

As someone who does not use social media, Blinkfeed is useless. Yes, you can move it off the main page, but you cannot turn it off. All those updates to the tiles keep burning battery. As for the battery, it needs to be larger. Phones do not need to be so thin you can shave with them. The DO need to last all day (with all day use). While local storage is very good, I still want the microSD card slot. Transferring large files/large numbers of tiles/viewing photos from my REAL camera is just easier with microSD. All aluminum body is dead sexy, but aluminum is a fairly soft metal and will scratch easily. Must have a case. FINALLY someone (other than Nokia) is doing something about the cameras on cell phones. Low light sensitivity always suck on cell phones. Glad to see this one being addressed. 4 MP is plenty for a phone. Want a picture you can blow up to life size? Use a DSLR. Most people are not talking about the addition of IR. This is big for me! With IR, Bluetooth and Wifi I can control everything in my house! Finally, can the phone be purchased unlocked? If so, how much? I don't think this is "the" phone for me but I hope HTC uses some of these features in future phones (a max battery version would be nice).Reply

@anand i really wonder if a 13MP sensor of the same size (amounts to ~1µm per pixel) and using 4 sensor pixels per image pixels in low light wouldn't be the better choice...- great big outdoor pictures- small but bright indoor pictures...

at least in theory this 4:1 mapping should result in approx. the same performance, or is this impractical???Reply

720p in 4.7" is already 312PPI, and no one with 2.0/2.0 eyesight will see pixels from 10" distance.I just don't understand why this silly 'PPI' race is going on.

They put 4MP sensor and says they won't do the megapixel race - then why do the PPI race which is plain meaningless? At least high-MP camera is better for outdoor pics. 400+ppi screen is good for nothing.Reply

Are you old enough to remember when consumer oriented printers began focusing on dots per inch? 144 DPI clearly sucked, the early laser printers at 300 DPI were a godsend but expensive, and once prices came down and competition from inkjets heated up the race was on to 600, 1200 or more DPI. Today we take it for granted, but when was the last time you printed a document at less than 600 DPI?

Unlike printers, LCDs don't need to handle halftone screens and can take advantage of anti-aliasing. However, I spend quite a bit of time reading very small text on my phone. I'll be happy when virtually all of the LCDs in my life are closer to 600 PPI. Also consider the sizable Asian market and the impact that resolution makes on non-latin script at small sizes.

Whining about real progress on a tech site is ridiculous, especially with all the pointless arguments about what viewing distance person x or person y can still discern a pixel at. If text is easier to read at higher resolutions for a good percentage of the population, then there is still a reason to go there. If you compare text and photos printed at 300 and 600 DPI it's obvious that most people can see a difference.Reply

DPI is different from PPI, as they need dithering to display halftones.And there is biological limit for display PPIs. You simply cannot outresolve 300PPI screen at 10 inch distance, even if your eyesight is 2.0/2.0.Reply

I already pointed out the halftone issue, which is a decidedly different technique than dithering. While you may not be able to readily distinguish individual pixels on a 300 PPI display from 10 inches, I will bet money that most people can tell the difference when looking at type on a 300 PPI display vs. a 600 PPI display.

I used to do prepress work. I've looked at plenty of output at various resolutions that was strictly PostScript text or vector based graphics with no halftoning or dithering involved. 300 PPI is not enough to be indistinguishable from higher resolutions. The difference between 600 and 1200 requires a loupe for me.

Mind you I never said that 1920x1080 was a good choice of resolution for a phone. I'm happier with slightly smaller displays and different aspect ratios, but then again I almost never watch movies or play games on my phone.

The yield argument is ridiculous. The yields will always be negligible if nobody specs the damn things. I'm also not in the market for a cheaper phone. I want a better phone, and I'm quite willing to pay for it. Unfortunately no matter how much I seem to pay AT&T I can't manage to get anything better in the way of carrier service in my home market.Reply

And you just CANNOT increase resolution without sacrificing anything. High resolution LCDs requires more bright backlight, has lower yield and of course burdens GPU way more. (Remember current gen consoles cannot render any game in 1080p)

If they use 720p panel instead, they can make the phone cheaper, more brighter (given the same backlight), and cooler (less GPU load). and most importantly last longer.

All these sacrifices for silly 1080p marketing gimmick nobody will distinguish from normal distances. Maybe in one year or two, some OEM will say that PPI race is meaningless and they will give 2x battery life instead. Ironically, HTC did the same with this phone with their camera MP count.Reply

Given that HTC has had some adjustments to their phones due to mimicking Apple, I'm surprised to see a complete lack of commentary by Klug on the obvious design elements that seem hijacked from the iPhone. The end product looks like a hybrid of the iPhone 5 (beveled chamfered edge, color scheme, antenna integration, etc.) and and iPhone 3G/S (rounded back). It looks sharp but the clear design rip-offs are obvious. Also, I'm not so sure about the whole cluster of gear along the top of the front panel. Would a center mounted camera make it too obvious of an Apple ripoff? The whole issue of eyes being slightly off focus while looking at the screen is always an issue but is best mitigated with a center mounted camera. There is always a compromise in terms of turning the device to a different orientation but it's always beneficial to have at least one of the orientations having a center mounted camera. It seems the corner position will make the user always appear to look off to the side in the image regardless of orientation. It's great to have amped up speakers, but IMHO, if the intent behind front facing cameras is to facilitate face-to-face social interaction, designs that work to distance the user from a more personal interaction should be reconsidered.Reply

Well, like you said, they only SEEM hijacked from the iPhone and anyone with experience with HTC phones knows that's completely exaggerated. They have been using aluminum and unibody designs (even "unibodies" that weren't truly that like with the sensation) and more than anything broke away from that last year. They have also been using curved backs for years (ones that come to mind are the sensation, butterfly, 8x, and to a lesser degree the touch pro 2). As for the camera, it would break up the design with the speakers as you mentioned and with their focus that wouldn't work all that well, that or place the camera above the speaker making the phone noticeably larger (and there are those who consider it too big or pushing the limits as is). Personally i prefer thenproper speakers to a centered camera as I tend to use the speakers a lot more than the camera for videochatting. Plus, the only way for someone to give the impression that they are trying to make jeye contact is for them to look directly at the camera means they're not really looking at the screen, take some self-portraits if you don't believe me. The integrated antennas are two strips along top and bottom but of the same material (with the iphone 5 they look different and top and bottom antennas have been used before).

I am not saying thatit is the best phone. The front does remind me of the BB Z10 (but nicer in my imo). The camera does sound promising and the detail of the shots I've seen (on gsmarena) do seem quite nice do I do miss the larger of detail, but they are only three pics so we won't know the true quality and whether the trade off was worth it until we get moresamples. Also I would have liked for itnto use a snapdragon 800 but due to thenrelease time I knew that was impossible. I'll likely upgrade come summer or autumn so it might be this phone or something else depending on what else has been announced/released.Reply

Who are these people that continue to complain about non-removable batteries? If I bought a spare battery for every phone I have acquired recently they'd be lying around everywhere. Are people that incredibly stupid ? Buy 1 LiOn battery pack that is easily pocketable and it charges EVERY usb cable charged device on the planet. If you seriously need that much direction in life you shouldnt even be researching android phones.Reply

Well, you have to remember the two reasons of using removable batteries:The first is that the phone does not last all day or the time away from a charger that one spends. A portable power pack is a viable solution but definitely more expensive than the replacement battery and requires connecting a cable for a prolonged period of time while a spare battery doesn't.The second reason for replacement batteries is my mian concern for one, the valid lifespan of the battery as measured in recharge cycles. Normal batteries have 500 recharge cycles before they start to significantly lose their max charge held (and in my experience when they start hold less of ancharge it dimishes ever so quickly). A portable battery pack doesnt help with this, it itself is subject to the same degradation. Supposedly the new bbatteries from LG have a lifespan of 800 charges versus 500 but how do we know if a phone has it or not? I also assume that other battery makers will have similar advancements but I have not heard of them, making it even more difficult to make an informed decision.Reply

OK, so either you regularly cycle your battery more than once a day or you carry the same phone for more than 18 months. Both are foreign concepts to me. Seriously, who does that?

I've replaced nearly every part of an iPhone for various folks over the past few years, but never had to replace a battery. It's never come up once. Which is odd, because I've seen plenty of iPod batteries crap out, but then again people tend to keep those in use far longer than most phones. I much prefer not having a battery door that becomes loose over time.Reply

Both should be concepts easy enough to grab. I've had vatious friends and acquaintances who charge their phone more than once a day (it SEEMS to be more prevalent with iphones but is definitely not limitednto them.) It also depends on just how much you do with your phone. I spend anywhere between two to six hours in public transport on a given day, plus time waiting for people, meetings, friends. During that time I either read on an ebook reader, or on days which I don't feel like reading a book I listen to music and browse the internet, MAYBE play a game. So yeah, it is easy for me to kill the battery in under a day and therefore need to charge it kore than once a day. Plus other uses I give it.

And I don't buy a new phone every year nor every six months. I buy high end phones off contract sothey are not exactly cheap. So yeah, I like them to last, I dont like being wasteful. Plus I like there to be real advancements before upgrading. Recently there are BIG advancements in phones, be it screens, SoC's, Cameras (not as much recently but they keep improving). I didn't upgrade my second smartphone for four years (the first only lasted a year but because it wasnstolen) because I didn't see the point, they were still using ARM11 based SoC's with comparable speeds, and other factors...I went through seven batteries with it (in part because they never lasted a whole day) My next smartphone lasted two years...and the antenna died, plus everything but the screen had greatly advanced. Now my current ohone is ALMOST a year and anhalf old, its battery has been in dire need of replacement for a couple of months but I haven't gotten around to it.

I'll kost likely upgrade this year, but because I see real benefit in doing so. My point is that people who buy off contract, for whatever reason, are more likely to upgrade because of need or real tangible benefits. Reply

How you figured that? If you downsize (on the camera, computer or simply through output device like display or paper) 8 (or 12) mpix image to the same final resolution as 4 mpix sensor, each final combined pixel will have as much light as on the 4 mpix sensor of the same physical size and efficiency (and nothing indicates that the 4 mpix sensor is made on more efficient technology, in fact, low res allows it to be produced on older, cheaper tech, like 500 nm). Moreover, if you display/print 8 (or 12) mpix image vs 4 mpix image on the media able to take every pixel (for example UltraHD screens or 300 dpi paper bigger than 6in x 8in, the noise from higher-resolution sensor will appear finer-grained, which is better.

And of course lower-res sensor loses when digitally zooming (i.e. using just central portion of the sensor where the lens is also sharper, when even 2x zoom loses 3/4 of pixels). And smartphones don't have any other zoom but digital, so it is important. Zoom 2x, and 4mpix become 1mpix, which is not even enough to fill desktop background.

Where 4 mpix sensor wins over higher res sensors (assuming the same technology) is speed of continuous shooting, amount of memory and power spent per shot, time to downscale the photos for display resolution and display them on the screen, time to e-mail or upload to the services taking full-res photos, consumes less bandwidth - all very valid advantages of lower resolution on a smartphone, all outweighing the (dubious due to super-small sensor and lens limitations) advantages of printing in better quality bigger than 6in x 8in. But just don't say lower res magically provides higher quality, because it does not. Especially on a BSI-CMOS sensor where all per-pixel electronics is on the other side of the chip.

The best approach is the one used in Nokia 808, with much bigger and high-res sensor, where pixels are automatically banded together when all the sensor is used (for low res advantages), but when "zoomed in", they start working individually to maintain resolution high enough.Reply

This comment is directed at the people who say (or believe) things like:"The phone should at least last ALL DAY""My phone lasts 1.5 days with AVERAGE USE"Or my personal favourite:"The battery is great, I can talk for 2 hours, send about 15-30 texts, play about an hour of Temple Run and have 26% left by the end of the day"

No. There is no such thing as "it lasts all day". Unless you literally have your screen on all day, your phone goes to sleep and (assuming decent signal, and no dumb apps/widgets are running) uses only about 1% every few hours. This does not count as the phone battery lasting "all day". There is no such thing as "average use". Everyone's use case is different. Your personal anecdotal usage is irrelevant. And it's unreliable anyway because you probably did not measure your usage properly.

The proper way to measure smartphone battery life is with benchmarks. Anandtech doesn't innovate much in this area and I expect a lot more from my favourite tech website. Even ultra-nerd smartphone editor Brian Klug is guilty of the "It lasts me allll day!" blunder.

Until smartphone battery life during ACTUAL usage at least DOUBLES (let's say 16 hours, to allow for human sleep/phone charging for the other 8 hours of the day), there will be LOTS room for improvement. I look forward to that day.

And by 16 hours of "actual usage", I mean a 16-hour phone call, COMBINED WITH 8-10 hours of simultaneous constant light web-browsing/e-book reading/texting/data messaging, 3 hours of 3D gaming thrown in, an hour or two of 1080p HD video recording, while uploading/downloading a few gigs of data over LTE in the background, along with all the stuff (Bluetooth/NFC/GPS/LTE) enabled. That would virtually guarantee an end to battery anxiety.

All it would take is a larger battery. The DROID RAZR MAXX has a 3300mAh battery and is about 9mm thick, the EB40 battery thickness around 3.8mm. Double it and you get a 6600mAh phone which is 12.8mm thick. (The HTC Evo was 12.7mm when it first came out) It wouldn't add much to the cost of the phone. If no manufacturer does this within the year, I will modify them myself and sell them on ebay for $900.Reply

I understand that people tend to multi-task but the amount of simultaneous activity whilst on the phone is unreasonable and unrealistic. Personally I'd feel bad for anyone on the otther side of a phone call where the caller is doing all that. I understand you're trying to make a point, but your portrayal, despite the detail is just as unscientific as "it lasts all day" or "average use" (I am not trying to flame nor offend but just point out that we are all subject to the same vagaries and hyperbole)Reply

I didn't mean to imply my 16 hours thing was was a realistic workload. It's just an extreme example of the most you could possibly do with a phone. It's not necessary to go that far, but if any manufacturer did, it would put battery anxiety to bed permanently. No matter what you did, you wouldn't be able to kill the phone within a day unless you ran something that consumed 100% CPU the whole time.Reply

"The proper way to measure smartphone battery life is with benchmarks. Anandtech doesn't innovate much in this area and I expect a lot more from my favourite tech website. Even ultra-nerd smartphone editor Brian Klug is guilty of the "It lasts me allll day!" blunder."

Whoa, what site have you been reading? I'm not sure there's anyone on the planet more obsessed with battery life testing than Anand. It takes time to do those tests, they're not completed yet. This article is titled "Hands on and Impressions" not "Brian Klug's Definitive Review". This piece is just to coincide with the media event earlier.Reply

Well... GSM Arena for one. They do a video playback test (screen-on time!) and a standby test. Anandtech does neither of these.

As for someone out there being more obsessed with battery life testing than Anand (or Brian), I can safely say that I am. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten to charge my phone, or forgot to bring a charger, or had to make a quick stop to charge at a Starbucks or something.. Or the amount of times I've had to text someone "Hey, I'll talk to you later, I have 1% battery". Then I'm just unreachable.

Phones have already replaced GPS devices/iPods/Point & Shoot cameras for many people.. Soon they will in effect start to replace computers as well. Within 3-5 years we'll have Ivy bridge-like performance on phones, using them with wireless displays and keyboards.. Wouldn't it be great if we established a "16-hour actual usage life" precedent before all that, while it's still relatively easy?

I use an app called My Battery Analyser and it does nothing except chart each time the battery drops by 1% for easy readability, and give you a figure of % drop per hour. This is very useful for testing how much charge a specific app uses, or finding out if your phone is mysteriously losing 5% charge overnight when it's supposed to be perfectly idle. I've done some testing with interesting results. For example, using Skype over 3G on my SGS3 gives a consistent 23%/hr drop, or just over 4 hours of life. Terrible! But guess what? Heavy SMSing (0% Brightness, everything OFF) doesn't fare much better.

I'd like to see a test just sending SMS constantly every few seconds with the screen on. MANY people text more than talk nowadays.

A test that measures screen time while displaying mostly static content, like an e-book, would be nice. The Anandtech web browsing test is useful as a comparative tool, but if I were ever to spend 5 hours browsing the internet, most of it would probably be spent looking at the same page for at least minutes at a time, not loading new pages every 10 seconds.

And why not do a video playback test? I remember being really confused by this.

I'd also love to see a proper standby test, to see if the software pre-installed on the phone (widgets and Samsung apps and whatnot) causes drops in standby life, and exactly how much % you are losing per day to this nonsense. This could be done with My Battery Analyser or an equivalent app. You'd charge the phone to 100%, turn everything off but leave Wifi on, reboot it, put it to sleep, wait for it to discharge. Every modern smartphone should last at least a week.

I don't know what you refer to at the end, I didn't mention anything about the tests for the HTC One being complete or not.Reply

Or you can simply make 1M devices in one year by having 1,000 machines in your factories. (52 * 6 * 12 * 1000 = 3,744,000 hours of CNC time) And your hourly rates have nothing to do with the going rates in China at the moment.Reply

I am a huge proponent of attentive industrial design and incorporation of non-synthetic materials, so the machined aluminum body with front-facing speakers commands big love. Although the 2013 HTC One is presumably well positioned against the iPhone and Galaxy S4, my next smartphone purchase will likely be either the next Nexus or a pen-toting phablet. The tradeoff is fairly straightforward: either I save $300 on an extremely capable handset with rapid OS updates (i.e. Nexus 5/X), or I spend $600+ on a multi-tasker like the Note III. YMMVReply

Why are they touting 200 minutes of milling and using ridiculously energy-intensive aluminum bodies as a bonus? It just seems extremely wasteful to me for a small device that will be thrown away in a year. If anything, if they want to make aluminum devices, they should tout how well-optimized they got their manufacturing.

I don't get why they mill it from a solid block either. The only advantage of milling over casting is that you can do small series and the base material strength is (mostly) preserved. It's not like you need 7075 grade aluminum for strength. The only strength requirement for these phones is scratch resistance, and you can get that with anodized clad aluminum. They should just use cast recycled aluminum and post-process it with conventional means. It will save them, the environment and your wallet without any downside to the end product.

"The HTC One runs Android 4.1.2, a choice which might seem alarming, but was done for stability and quality reasons, although 4.2 is coming. I think it might sound bad to ship with 4.1, but even Google acknowledged that 4.2 was primarily a release with more tablet features than something for smartphones, after all both are still Jelly Bean. "

it should be "still NAMED Jelly Bean", and name is irrelevant. Old version is old version, and 4.1 is 8 months old now and will be even older when the phone starts to ship. It is a very poor excuse for not investing in updating OS for their phones. Even top of the line phones are updated maybe once. 4.2 is 4 months old too, and by the time it MAYBE, EVENTUALLY, comes to HTC it will be outdated too.Only Nexus is updated regularly (4.2.2 is knocking at my door right now), but even Nexus is not updated on Verizon.Reply

As long as HTC won't S-Off their bootloaders and keep harassing developers, I'll not buy another. I love HTC hardware and would once have called myself a diehard fan. Now, I've got a Nexus 4 (to replace my Intl. One X) and I've not looked back. I ran Cyanogenmod on the One X anyway, I haven't wanted Sense since 2.3 on my old Desire when Android's own UI sucked by comparison. I can't see the reason to put up with the horrible experience clash between the Sense UI and Holo apps.Reply

I want that phone. I'd have to see battery tests to be sure but it's about time someone did a camera right. Hopefully Sprint won't wait long to put the phone on Virgin Mobile. I don't even care if it's 400 bucks, I'll still buy it. The amount of money I save monthly makes it worth it.Reply

I'm one of the curmudgeons who doesn't like the fact that smartphones are becoming ginormous. The design does look really nice though, a good change for HTC. I'd be happier if they made a 4" version with a 720P display.

Unfortunately one of my pet peeves remains: the UI. I know HTC wants to differentiate themselves, but I'd prefer stock Android. I know I might be able to root it and put on a clean build, but I shouldn't need to do that with an "open" platform.

Still, it's nice to see the competition get better and better. I like my iPhone, but iOS is starting to feel a bit stale. Should I decide to switch, it's nice to have a range of options.Reply

I have had a HTC one X and it was waterproof fell into a 2 feet deep puddle during rainfalland there was no issue after retrieving it. If that was a Samsung i would be sending it for replacement. Can't wait to see the price on this one HTC always makes quality phones . Sold my One X for a LG Nexus and now all i want is another HTC phone the sense UI and hand grip made it feel like it was worth the cost. The battery Life was an issue with the one x but with the bigger battery in the One i see that problem dissapearing.Reply